The Price Of Survival
by spittlepig
Summary: What does it take to kill the unkillable?????
1. The Price Of Survival - Chapter 1 : Incu...

TITLE: The Price Of Survival  
AUTHOR: Ananova Crowe ||^_^||  
DISCLAIMER: i don't own 'em, i just play with 'em!!! :) i would really appriciate it if you could send me feedback, thank you!!!  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Metallica: Poor Twisted Me   
  
Where do I take this pain of mine  
I run, but it stays right by my side  
  
So tear me open, pour me out  
There's things inside that scream and shout  
And the pain still hates me  
So hold me, until it sleeps  
  
Just like the curse, just like the stray  
You feed it once, and now it stays  
  
~*~  
  
The Price of Survival CHAPTER .1 - Incubus  
  
*present*   
  
Breathing…  
  
Bleeding…  
  
Screaming…  
  
"No!" Logan roared viciously as he snapped straight up in the medical bed, unleashing the nine-inch claws of unbreakable adamantium at the soft flesh between his knuckles from one hand. He tore away the dampened covers from his body and pivoted his clawed hand sideways to catch something, anything on their deadly blades to ease the nightmare.  
  
But suddenly, having been ripped away from his life-support's, he collapsed back into the bed, his entire body shaking uncontrollably. Sweat and blood became a vile stench in the tiny room; filling their nostrils and making them gag.  
  
Jean Grey and her fiancé Scott "Cyclops" Summers rushed to replace the IV's and tubing that had been torn away from his body, but his violent trembling made it extremely difficult for both of them. Small streams of blood spilled from where his IV's and lines had been inserted.  
  
He was fighting something or someone in his sleep, like a nightmare. His head flipped from side to side, mumbling words and grunting as if to talk to the nightmare. His body moved only slightly besides his trembling, the pain not making him able to move much otherwise.  
  
"Help me strap him down before he hurts himself," Jean yelled over to her fiancé, beginning to pull loose the straps on the side of the bed. "You mean before he hurts us..." Scott said under his breath, preparing to catch the straps that Jean were throwing over Logan's body with her mind. Scott made sure to secure them as tight across his shoulders as he dared.  
  
But Logan's claws swept upward to pull off the newly secured strap at his shoulders, barely missing Scott's throat by half an inch, close enough that Scott could feel the air rush behind them. Logan's strength was unbelievable, making Scott have to do everything short of climbing on top of his arm to get it back down and strapped tightly to the bed.   
  
"Get inside of his head and shut him off!" Scott yelled over Logan's roar, flashing an upward glance to his fiancée before snapping back down to try and control his clawed hand from swiping up again.  
  
"I can't!" Jean placed her hand to the side of her head to steadily direct herself into Logan's mind. But for the second time, she came up short of penetration. "He's blocking me out! We'll just have to do our best..."  
  
"Easier said than done..." Scott mumbled. Then he cursed wickedly under his breath as Logan's hand got free and one of his claws nicked him on the arm, drawing a trickle of blood. Scott immediately forgot about his wound and pushed with all his might on Logan's wrist. "Give me another strap!" Scott bellowed, breaking Jean's intense concentration to get inside Logan's head again.  
  
"It's no use!" Jean threw more straps over Logan's body like flying serpents, directing them to land perfectly into Scott's outstretched hand. Then with fluid motion, Scott clicked in the belt and tightened it as tight as he could.   
  
Finally, within an eternity of fighting, grunting, and sheer muscle power, they had successfully gotten Logan completely strapped down and all his IV's replaced. Jean was just about to inject Logan with diazepam when his shuddering suddenly quieted then stopped. His head rolled to the side and his body relaxed as if nothing had happened at all, and in a moment, he was just sleeping.  
  
Scott shot a confused look to Jean before collapsing back into a chair, kicking out his feet so he was spread across the seat and back of the chair. The ruby-quartz lens in his blue visor suddenly went dark as he closed his eyes, sighing deeply. His chest heaved from beneath his plaid shirt as he tried to recollect himself.  
  
"I'm bushed..." Scott said, lazily rolling his head back up to his fiancée who seemed as eager as ever to check over Logan's vital statistics and pull a new blanket over his body. She swept all her attention up to Logan's head, slowly working her way down, reconnecting broken lines and checking reopened wounds.   
  
"I wonder what happened..." Jean said to herself, but loud enough that Scott heard. She was completely oblivious to Scott's comment, too engaged with Logan to notice. "What do you think they did to him?"  
  
"I don't know," Scott said simply, too tired to think about it. He watched as Logan's extended claws slowly retracted back into his arm and the flesh between his knuckles coupled as the piercing ends of the claws retreated beneath, leaving his hand as if nothing was there in the first place. "Maybe we should sleep on it."  
  
"Maybe you're right, I mean, we have been up for almost seventy-two hours..." Jean admitted, walking toward her fiancé and falling across his lap, she wrapped her arms about his neck and rested her head against his shoulder, breathing into his ear. "I love you..."  
  
"I love you too..." Scott turned his head and kissed her on the neck, shifting to slide his hands beneath her and preparing to carry her like a little child from the room, even with his crushed hand. He was about to move out the door when Jean said something that made him stop and think.  
  
"Who's going to watch him?" She whispered in his ear, closing her eyes and tightening her arms around his neck, feeling the full force of her exhaustion. Scott's eyebrows stitched at the question, they definitely couldn't leave him alone with the way he was acting lately.  
  
"I will," Ororo "Storm" Monroe chimed in, walking past the two lovebirds with something short of a smile across her dark face. Her shock of snow-white hair was pulled back into a braid that sat limp between her shoulder blades. She was still wearing her torn and tattered X-Men uniform as a symbol of pride and accomplishment.  
  
"Thank you," Jean called out over Scott's shoulder as he carried her away down the hallway, not far from the medical lab. Ororo yawned and closed the door behind her as she turned back to Logan. She, as had the others, had fought a battle that nearly killed them, but it was still far from completely over.  
  
"Poor man," She muttered quietly under her breath, taking in his beaten and vulnerable form. Logan lay calm under the taut belts that bit into his flesh, the straps rising and falling with each of his smooth breaths. Dark bruises and still healing wounds were splashed across his bare chest and face, adding color to his otherwise pale features.   
  
One of his arms was wound in bandaging from his palm, clear up to his elbow. Various layers of dressing were wound across his chest and shoulders and stomach, crimson blooms of blood pushing through the sterile white dressing. From beneath the blanket, Ororo saw the bulge of his cast that was secured around his broken leg.  
  
She silently took a seat next to Logan's bedside and reached up with a shaky hand to stroke his dark hair. She was surprised at her trembling, but dismissed it as nothing more than exhaustion. He felt hot under her fingertips, as if someone was holding a flame to the other side of his skin. Ororo stood and filled a bowl with cold water, soaking a cloth in the water and returning to Logan's side.  
  
He had begun to mumble something again, whatever it was; she couldn't make it out to the best of her advantage. His hands flinched beneath the straps and his legs shifted under the blanket and silk belts. "No... no...get away...away from me..." He mumbled a little louder, his eyes wild beneath the cover of his eyelids.   
  
"Shush," Ororo whispered, leaning close to his face. She tried to calm him, running the dripping cloth across his sweat-dotted forehead that appeared to steam when the water touched it. Then suddenly, the unexplainable happened.  
  
With the blink of an eye, Logan sat straight up, snapping half of the thick silk straps as if they were nothing more than wet tissue. In fluid motion, he ripped the belts at his legs with a whispered *snikt* of his claws and was up out of the bed just as swiftly. There was a strange, evil look playing in his eyes as if he were possessed.  
  
Ororo barely had time to get to her feet before Logan was onto her, limping lightly on his broken leg as if it was nothing more than an inconvenience. "Help me! -" was the only thing she could scream before there was three blades of adamantium at her throat and a threatening fist pressed into her stomach. With the just as surprised Logan using her as a human shield, opposite the door.  
  
Within five seconds, the door burst open and Scott was in the room, barely able to stop himself as he saw the incident happening before him. He spread his arms wide to catch and halt Jean behind him, stumbling momentarily before the room was wordless, except for the screeching of the medical equipment.  
  
"Turn it off!" Logan bellowed over the beeps, pressing his fist harder into Ororo's stomach to show that he was not joking. Jean nodded slowly and went over to the wall, unplugging the cord, which gave the machines one last breath before dying away to an eerie silence. The only sound in the entire room was the heavy breathing of Logan, mostly due to the fact of all the medication.  
  
"No!" Logan roared, his claws suddenly shuddered away from Ororo's neck as if he were fighting with himself and losing. The strange look in his eyes suddenly flickered before overwhelming him again and his claws snapped back against Ororo's neck. "There will be no resistance to me!" His voice suddenly dropped a pitch as he said it, deep and rumbling in his throat as if he were haunted.   
  
"Stay there!" The crazed Logan with the deep voice commanded to Jean, who obeyed and stayed still in the corner of the room. He snapped his dark, wild eyes toward the young man before him, wearing newly thrown-on plaid sleep-trousers and a gray tee shirt. A shock of auburn hair crept up out of the top of a blue visor with a ruby-quartz lens. "Nobody move..."  
  
"Logan?" Jean whispered quietly from the corner, when Logan did nothing more than turn to face her straight on, she continued. But the look of evil in his eyes kept her from moving towards him or protection. "We're your friends, you have nothing to fear." Logan cocked his head and his eyebrows dropped as if what she had said confused him.  
  
"Friends?" Logan spat as if the words were acid to his throat and tongue. "I have no friends," Suddenly, he began sniffing the air like a dog, taking in a scent that no one else in the room seemed to notice. He slowly leaned forward, taking a long sniff into Ororo's hair, which made her draw in a sharp breath and close her eyes.  
  
"You have nowhere to go..." Scott thought quickly, finding something else for the man to think about. Logan repositioned his clawed hand so it was off of Ororo's neck and pointed toward the door with glinting metal. He kept his face buried in Ororo's hair as if to protect himself from Scott if he decided to do something.  
  
"That's where you're wrong, bub." Logan pushed his leg into the back of Ororo's knee, making her stumble forward, Logan still using her to protect himself. Even through her tight leather suit, Ororo could feel Logan's clenched fingers drum against his palms and suddenly begin to tremble.  
  
Jean began to approach him when Scott grabbed her wrist, holding her back. She turned to him; a confused and frightened look overcame her face. Scott shrugged and shook his head, trying to keep his fiancée safely close to him.   
  
Logan's hand slowly retracted from Ororo's stomach, moving up to reach for his head as if it hurt terribly, and began to roar in pain. "Jean! Please help me!" Logan screamed in the middle of the roar, the berserker look flickering from his eyes again. Ororo took this moment to pivot quickly out of his reach, backing away towards Scott and Jean who stood helpless in the corner, watching the man suffer.  
  
Logan howled and dropped to his knees, the pain in his head feeling as if someone was beating on his brain with an ice pick. Then, with a loud thump, he lay sprawled facedown on the carpeted floor and his claws slid silently back into his hand.  
  
~*~  
  
After Ororo, Jean, and Scott had gathered themselves, they summoned up enough courage to move Logan into the twenty-four hour watch and heavily alarmed medical lab down the hall. While there, they hooked him up to everything he needed and were careful to strap his arms and legs individually and securely with numerous silk straps and an occasional steel clamp.   
  
When they were done, Logan looked more like a mechanical Houdini set to do his latest miracle escape than a mutant that was misunderstood and of suspicious behavior. Sensors were placed at his temples, recording and displaying every REM as a spiky red line glowing across an otherwise black screen beside Logan's bedside.   
  
Another sensor was placed across his forehead and connected with long green wires down to crucial areas along his body, reading his brainwaves and psychoneurotic signals. But despite all the expensive equipment, extensive medical research, and the technical expertise, there was still no answer to Logan's problem.   
  
An oxygen mask covered his mouth and nose to help his breathing; the plastic bubble was fogged with the heat from his breath. As another precaution, both of his hands were bound with numerous layers of silk cloth around his knuckles to restrain his claws as long as they possibly could.   
  
They all felt sorry for making the wounded man look like a science project, but they had had no choice. They had not told either Professor Xavier or the children in the school, keeping it silent among conversations. But most importantly, they had not told Rogue who would have come looking for him. He just couldn't be trusted, no matter what had happened to him and how badly he was hurt, or may be.  
  
Jean sat silently in the surveillance room, leaning forward over the orderly desk with her chin supported on her knuckles. She had gotten some sleep that night, but not enough to fully restore her body to its prime, but she didn't really care.   
  
She was too caught up in Logan's behavior that her sleeping was almost as reckless as Logan's had been. She didn't want to wake Scott, who had been snoring loudly in exhaustion, so she had quietly crept off to the surveillance lab to think and watch.  
  
Her eyes stayed glued to Logan who lay sleeping about thirteen feet below the glass observation bubble that jutted from the wall above. No movement in the entire room could be missed by either the video cameras or the person sitting in the bubble, which made Jean feel somewhat more comfortable.  
  
All things were controlled up in the observation bubble, everything from the doors to the lighting, which was relatively dim at the moment. If someone were to turn off all the lights, the glass bubble would then drop an infrared scanner to show every warm thing in the room with vibrant colors.  
  
~*~  
  
Scott yawned and rolled over, throwing his arm over to the lump at the other side of his bed, but the lump turned out as nothing more than the twisted covers. He lazily sat up, checking that his visor was securely strapped to his face, and got to his feet.  
  
He looked around the room, only half expecting to find her in a chair thinking or something. But with a sigh, he stretched his arms above his head and twisted his body until he heard the hollow crack of his spine realigning.   
  
He padded barefoot out into the hall, welcoming the cold, smooth tiles of the floor at his bare feet. He reached up to scratch the back of his head, taking his time to figure out where his fiancée could have run off to, then he kind of figured. Which made him sigh in frustration and shake his head.  
  
Scott silently opened the observation bubble's door to an empty room, the dim light of the lab beneath bathing the observation bubble in a gray light. As he stepped in and shut the door behind him, shadows splashed and broke across his face and danced strange pictures about on the walls.  
  
Slowly, he made his way to the front of the room, flinching back momentarily before leaning forward and looking over to the medical lab below. Just as he had suspected, Jean was bent over Logan, stroking his hair and what looked like to be talking to him. Then a shudder went through his spine as Jean reached down and kissed the unconscious man on the lips.  
  
This made Scott pivot back from the desk, clenching his fists at his sides and squeezing his eyes shut. He waited until his frustration and anger passed before releasing his hands and allowing his eyes to reopen. He was surprised to find his hands tingling from the sudden loss of pressure from his fingertips digging into his palms.  
  
He was so mad he wanted desperately to blast through something with his eyes, but he refrained. *That would be like Logan...* Scott tore away from his thought at the mention of the man's name, forcing himself to think of something not even connected to Logan, but he couldn't.  
  
~*~  
  
Jean jumped and whirled around on her heel to meet the almost recollected face of Scott, his lips thin and tight. Even through the ruby-quartz lens and despite her telepathic abilities, Jean could tell that Scott was or had been very mad. No doubt being something toward her and Logan.  
  
"What are you doing?" Scott asked with forced kindness, immediately closing his mouth before anything else could escape. His hands were clasped tight behind his back, wringing nervously and angrily.  
  
"I was just checking over his equipment, why are you up?" She tried to ignore his look and turned back to Logan, fixing a loose plug and staring at an incredibly interesting blinking light on his heart monitor.   
  
"I should be asking you the same question." Scott shot back, a little more arrogant than what he really meant it as.   
  
"I couldn't sleep and I didn't want to wake you. And your reason?" She didn't even turn back to face him, instead she busied herself by running her finger along a cut at Logan's cheek that was small enough that didn't need to be covered by bandaging, but big enough to take a while for his healing factor to take affect. And from all the drugs that had been pumped into him, his mutant powers had no doubt been slowed somewhat.  
  
"I woke up to an empty bed, where my fiancée usually sleeps..." Scott spat, his visor glowing a brighter red as he lost a sliver of his clutched anger. His breathing was fast and shallow, as he tried unsuccessfully to calm himself down.  
  
"And just what does that mean?"  
  
"I want to know why Logan is so goddamned important to you!" Scott couldn't keep it in any longer, so he let it come and blindly prepared for the punishment.  
  
"Because he is hurt..." Jean began calmly, but Scott interrupted her.  
  
"He's always hurt! Don't you see Jean? He's using his pain to get to you! It's not safe for you to be down here..." Scott's eyes seemed to ignite the room in red light, glowing viciously from the visor that looked insufficient to control such anger.  
  
Jean's head shot upright and she took a shaky breath before turning to bring her face three inches away from his, looking him straight in the visor where his eyes were. "I'm a grown woman Scott, and I love you very much. But don't you ever say anything about Logan like that again. That man has gone through so much shit that even you should have the decency to give him support! You have no right!"   
  
With that, Scott was out the door and stomping angrily down the hallway to his room, slamming the door angrily behind him. He dressed in more acceptable clothes and threw on his shoes as he decided to get away from everything associated to the man and his troubles.  
  
He stormed out of the school, making rigid turns to the garage and straight onto his motorcycle. He revved the engine as loud as he could, before blasting out of the garage in full gear, leaving a huge black tire mark across the X symbol on the floor, with nothing so much as a backwards glance.  
  
~*~  
  
Jean fell limp, letting her arms support her head as her face fell into her hands. She braced herself on the edge of the medical bed, the small of her back holding her upright. She wasn't sorry for what she had said, she was only speaking the truth, and she knew that Scott knew it.  
  
In frustration she shut out everything about Scott, focussing on a comforting blank crevice in her mind. Suddenly, a picture of Logan's tortured face from earlier flashed across her mind, dissolving into Scott's enraged face that wasn't all that different.  
  
She turned and gently lay across Logan's chest, feeling his calm breathing beneath her cheek as she gently stroked his limp hand. "Why do you have to be so difficult?" She whimpered, closing her eyes and taking in his clean smell.  
  
Then suddenly, she was inside of him, walking through his mind like a room with two doors. One being the entrance and one at the opposite side an exit, and lying in the middle was a glowing, glittering, rotating mass of everything he was, thought, knew, and loved.  
  
Then she had her answer...  
  
"The Price of Survival" Is To Be Continued In The Next Chapter...  



	2. The Price Of Survival - Chapter 2 : Beau...

TITLE: The Price Of Survival (Chapter 2)  
AUTHOR: Ananova Crowe ||^_^||  
DISCLAIMER: i don't own 'em, i just play with 'em!!! :) i would really appriciate it if you could send me feedback, thank you!!!  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Metallica: Poor Twisted Me (cont.)  
  
So tear me open, but beware  
There's things inside without a care  
And the dirt still stains me  
So wash me, until I'm clean  
  
It grips you, so hold me  
It stains you, so hold me  
It hates you, so hold me  
It holds you, so hold me  
  
~*~  
  
The Price of Survival CHAPTER .2 - Beautiful Disaster  
  
(Sum up chapter before: Logan has been acting strangely ever since the rescue and so Scott gets frustrated and leaves for a while and Jean unintentionally enters Logan's mind via her telepathic abilities and figures out what happened to him. :) )   
  
*present in Logan's mind*  
  
"...I know who you are...I know who you are...I know who you are..." The voice echoed like a marshmallow soaked in molasses, dripping from the invisible phantom's tongue. The remark echoed hollowly in his head, disturbing him through his sleepless night.  
  
"Get the hell out of my head!" Logan screamed out loud, cinching his eyes closed and smashing his pillow over the top of his head as if to block away the phantom. The rattling of the cheap window pain as the brutal drops of rain beat against the glass drowned out his voice.  
  
But the suffocation of the pillow made him lift it from his face, taking in a deep, long breath in to fill his aching lungs and satisfy his thirst to fill the emptiness. But despite all circumvention to avoid the voice, it returned to his head. Louder and more vexatious.  
  
"...I know who you are...I know who you are...I know who you are..."   
  
"Arrrrgh!" He screamed at the top of his lungs so it ricocheted off the flimsy walls and seemed to shake the entire building. "Then who the fuck am I?!" With one swift sidestroke of his arm and the whisper of summoned metal breaking through flesh, his pillow exploded into a soft snowfall of down feathers.   
  
The feathers scattered everywhere, coming to rest as a light blanket that seemed to quiet the room momentarily. Logan's eyes slowly fell to his hand, which shook in frustration and fear of himself.   
  
Three nine-inch alloy claws protruded from his clenched fist, the shredded remnants of the pillowcase hung in tatters, strewn across the deadly blades like a thick cloth of spider webs. He looked away in disgust as he retracted the blades back into his knuckles.  
  
"...I know who you are...I know who you are...I know who you are..." He forced himself not to listen, instead he pushed himself up from the rusty spring mattress and threw on a pair of faded jeans that were extremely worn with holes and tears all over, along with a black tee-shirt and a leather jacket.  
  
He figured he'd go for a short walk, despite the weather, and maybe go down by the river and watch the sunrise. He flashed a glance to his wristwatch, which read three a.m. He yawned, remembering that he hadn't slept a wink in five days, but it mattered little to him.  
  
~*~  
  
*three days before*  
  
"No, don't touch me! No! Get away from me!" Venus "Knightmare" Crowe cried out at the four men approaching her. She had been thrown onto her back onto the cold, hard concrete in the back of an alley. The pavement was splattered with blood, grime, and other things better left unrecognized.  
  
So far she had put up a pretty good fight, able to give one of the men a broken nose which bled uncontrollably down his chin and dripped onto the pavement. But still the man came with the others; his rage as deep as the other's but more so for his wound than her mutanty.   
  
She tried to kick at them, but they beat away her foot with the broken pipes and boards they had found along the road. She had managed to plant a good blow to the middle of one of the people's chest, but that only rewarded her with a purple bruise across the side of her cheekbone.  
  
"We know what you are you piece of shit...Your kind shouldn't be here...You freaks are what's scaring America to the brink of warfare...You should go back to the planet that you came from!" One of them yelled at her, swinging his pipe with a loud *thwack* across her shoulder, bringing forth a wave of pain.  
  
Venus cried out and fell back against the cement, smashing her head hard against the pavement. Her vision wavered momentarily, sloshing back and forth until returning to the hazy gray beneath her puffy eyelids.  
  
All she had done was walked home, in the middle of the night; she had just wanted to get away from studying late at school. But unfortunately she had been cut off by some people looking for a fight to pick because they somehow knew of her 'powers'.  
  
"Please stop! I didn't hurt anyone!" She protested, but the contact of flesh and biting splinters of wood made her think otherwise. Soon her whole head shook and the warm sensation of blood rushed into her mouth.   
  
She spat the bile to the ground, feeling it dribble down her chin at her lamed effort. She reached up with a shaky hand and clumsily wiped away the drool, wishing desperately to suddenly vanish into thin air. But her wish was only answered by the hard blow to the side of her head.   
  
Her vision began to cloud over, the looming blotches of black connecting and expanding so that despite all her trouble, she was blinded. The metal-toed boot of someone connected with her side, knocking the air from her lungs and causing her to fly backwards and smash into the wall behind her.  
  
She could do nothing but roll away from where she knew the next attack was coming, but her body sang out with so much pain that it hurt to even breathe. Then suddenly, her ears picked up the whisper of footsteps close to her head; she curled into a ball, expecting a harsh strike with something.   
  
But instead, there was the soft feeling of smooth cloth against her cheek. It felt like someone's fingers above the cloth pushing against her beaten and painful, but where the cloth touched her, there was no pain. Then suddenly, the numbing feeling that clouded over the pain began to spread, streaming through her veins and rushing through her every extremity so fast it burned.  
  
Within the blink of an eye, Venus' eyesight returned and the bruises and scratched no longer hurt, instead she was overcome with calmness and the sense of rest as if she had been sleeping and was completely content. It took her a minute to fully convince herself that she wasn't dreaming and to fully trust herself to turn over onto her back.  
  
"Holy shit!" One of the men said with huge eyes, his partners all huddled together, reinforcing the term 'safety by numbers'. Venus thought her imagination had finally gone to shreds when she heard what the man had to say next. "There's another mutie! Those damn things are all over like fucking insects! Let's get out of here."   
  
The men turned and fled, dropping their weapons to ease their escape and she lay and watched them retreat down the road. Then suddenly, something like invisible hands grabbed Venus by the wrists and gently guided her to her feet. She staggered for a moment, before another pair of hands were at her shoulders, supporting her.  
  
Venus turned back to see a tall, thin woman keeping balance for her. Her entire body was covered from head to toe in solid blue, and shingles of dark scales ran the length of her arms and legs. Her glossy red hair was slicked back solidly to her head, as if she had taken a glob of blood and used it as hair gel.  
  
The blue woman's pearly white teeth shown like a beacon through the darkness, illuminating her face and intensifying her features. Wicked yellow eyes glowed faintly in the moonlight, almost like a lizard's, but with some human effect.  
  
"You have nothing to fear now..." A voice came out from in front of her, as if someone was standing three inches from her face, but there was no one there. The voice was like a ghost, still holding her wrists like a protective mother.   
  
Then suddenly, the outline of a human began to liquefy, dripping down to add more onto the body until finally the shimmering illumination of a woman stood before her. Then the glimmering outline solidified, taking on specific form and colors.   
  
Soon a woman in tight leather pants and a white shirt was standing before Venus. Intense blue eyes stared down at her with love and compassion and warmth, the complete opposite of what was on her wrists.  
  
Even through her long-sleeved shirt, Venus could feel the biting coldness from the hands that were still locked around her wrists. The liquid-woman shot a look to the blue-scaled woman and released Venus' wrist, smiling politely.  
  
"Allow me to introduce myself, I am Asia Platt, but better known as "Vanish"," The liquid woman introduced herself, and then with a pale hand she pointed to the blue-scaled woman over Venus' shoulder. "And this is Mystique..."   
  
"I'm...I'm Venus...or "Knightmare"." She stuttered, then suddenly remembered. "Whatever you do, don't-" She warned with a shaky breath, but was cut off when Vanish lifted her hand.  
  
"I know," Vanish whispered then pointed out toward the opening of the alleyway, putting the other hand to her lips. Nightmare strained to watch and instead listened to the distant screams of the people who had tried to attack her.  
  
Suddenly, the alley was ignited in a blazing fire that seemed to roar upward and swallow the sky, dimming the stars, and ceasing the screams. Nightmare tilted her head up to Mystique with a questioning gaze.  
  
Mystique turned to her with wide, intensely yellow eyes and licked her lips. Obviously indicating something that Knightmare really didn't want to think about. Instead she turned back out to the dead flame, squinting hard into the darkness.  
  
Then she finally saw something, it was moving fast up the alley, bringing a glowing flame of intense blue fire behind it. It was in front of the three women within a single breath. Knightmare was momentarily blinded until her retinas got use to the flamed being before her.  
  
Standing proudly ahead of her was the levitating form of a tall, sleek man. He wore complete black and he smelled of singed clothing, even his skin was dark, the moonlight reflected off of his bald head. A white scar ran down the side of his face, as if someone had stabbed him in the cheek with a knife a long time ago.  
  
"It's a pleasure to finally meet you Knightmare, I am Coal Adams. But you may call me Flame." He smiled graciously and held out his clenched fist; slowly opening his palm to reveal a floating rose that was a thousand times redder than anything Knightmare had ever seen before.   
  
It was absolutely perfect in every way, the satin petals were a glowing crimson and the stem and razor-edged leaves were a vibrant green, even the sharp thorns seemed to create their own light. The magnificent rose rotated slowly in his hand, showing off it's beauty and elegance as if to mock the stars themselves.   
  
"It's yours." His voice was heavy with a Russian accent, matching his immense size. His hands were huge and strong, his fingers alone were longer than half the size of Knightmare's forearm. But his touch was the gentlest thing she had ever felt.   
  
"Thank you," Knightmare paused before taking the rose, afraid the delicate thing might crumble in her hands. But instead, the rose seemed to glow further, illuminating her face and everything around it in its soft, warm light. "But I don't understand..."   
  
"Come my child, we have much to talk about and do." Vanish said, breaking the silence and leading the entire group away into the night. Soon, the only thing that illuminated the night was the moon, which shown down on the splatter of blood a thousand times less vile and evil than a single crimson petal from one glowing rose.  
  
~*~  
  
*present in Logan's mind again* (sorry about the confusion, but it was the only way to make it work... :) )  
  
Logan ducked to avoid a low hanging limb, his boots splashing through the shimmering puddles without a care. He had been walking for three hours and the phantom's voice had done everything but left him alone.  
  
He had managed to ignore the voice for some time, but each time it spoke it became harder and harder to block out of his consciousness. Until finally when the sun began to just barely peek over the taut cord of the horizon, the voice boomed like thunder in his head.  
  
"...I know who you are...I know who you are...I know who you are..." They seemed to grab him by the shirt collar and stare him straight the face, using its mockery as the only explanation of itself.  
  
He pushed it away from him, finding his hurried pace and the rhythmic slap of his boots against the earth once again. He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets, feeling the beating raindrops through his soaked and sodden jacket.   
  
He chewed angrily at the butt of his cigar, unable to light it because of the constant rain. He instead survived by chewing at it until it was a mushy substance in his mouth and left a thick coating across his tongue.  
  
Logan stopped, listening to the swift current of the river somewhere off in the distance, but close enough that he could smell its sweet scent. Otherwise the forest was completely silent, not even the rustle or call of a lonely animal echoed off the trees. It seemed strange but he shrugged it from his shoulders, taking in another strange scent.   
  
He was about turn back when he spotted something in the distance, no doubt what was creating the smell. A small bulk jutted up from the earth, something that would have otherwise been missed by someone if they were even looking for it. But Logan had the exception of enhanced vision and even from his distance he could tell it was a human.  
  
He titled up his chin, taking a sniff in the air again before he began walking toward the bulk. As soon as he approached it, he saw it to be a young girl of about fourteen, wrapped from head to toe in clothes. Every inch of her body was covered except for her face, which was pale and looked sick.  
  
"You okay kid?" Logan asked, turning the girl over onto her back to get a better look at her. A puddle of crimson blood began to grow from beneath her, mixing and steaming as it met the mud and rain beneath. "Guess not." He muttered to himself, digging through the clothes until he came down to one layer at her throat.  
  
He knew from experience with Rogue that anyone enfolded in clothes usually wasn't supposed to be touched. He pushed his fingers in, straining to get a pulse until finally he felt the faint thump of a heartbeat, and a counter-heartbeat. Satisfied, he took his jacket from his shoulders and draped it over the young girl.  
  
"It may not be warm kid, but it's all I got." Logan looked up through the trees for anything or anyone that could be of help, but there was nothing. He froze solidly in place, his eyes were the only thing that pivoted to the right when his keen hearing detected the soft *kaff* of footfalls in the shadows.  
  
With blurred movement, three claws popped out from each of his hands, ready for anything that may come his way. He sniffed the air again, only picking up the scent of the girl lying unconscious before him. She reeked of blood, gore, and a lingering sense of fear.  
  
He turned back down to the girl, astonished to find the most beautiful rose he had ever seen in his life resting in her open hand, and her lips curled upward into a small smile. That's when he knew there was something very wrong.  
  
The attack came viscously from above him, a flurry of raking claws and choked cries. He barely had had a chance to defend himself before he was brought face-first into the ground. He came down hard on his palms, broken sticks and rocks digging into the balls of his hands.   
  
He did manage to twist out of their grasp but a hard kick to his belly caught him off guard. And suddenly he felt the sudden thunder of blackness in his head and the vibration of his skull when it met the something solid and metal.   
  
He was able to catch glimpse of the girl on her feet and smiling happily before a flash of blue and a sudden pain in his side made him get back into the fight. Without warning there were a swarm of colors about him and hands and arms holding him to the sodden ground. With a grunt, he lifted someone from his body and threw them against the thick tree beside him, getting the hollow crack of crushing bones.   
  
He blindly swept up with his claws, catching onto something that was thick and tight. He let himself a small smile of success, having finally penetrated someone with his claws for the first time in a while. But he didn't have time to dwell on the moment, nor did he have the control.  
  
The thunder of unconsciousness clouded over him as another blow was planted against the side of his head. He heard the snap of his jawbone as it crushed beneath the force of the huge limb, and a red pain seared through his skull. Another seven brutal blows to the head and stomach finally made the looming blackness consume him and he had no choice but to let himself fall into its icy hands.   
  
~*~  
  
"Adamantium - a supposedly unbreakable, impenetrable, and indestructible metal has been surgically grafted to his entire skeleton. Every bone in his six foot two inch frame is laced with the extremely tough metal alloy, making him a walking miracle. The miracle being that he survived this entire procedure. Bringing to full consideration the adducts of his mutations." She said.   
  
"He obtains the ability of uncharted regenerative capability, which amplifies his powers to restore damaged or even destroyed cells and heal at an incredible rapidity. Unfortunately, during the procedure of bonding the alloy to his bones, fluctuations in the surgical configuration warped at the base of his forearm, causing three - nine inch - claws of extremely durable adamantium alloy to extend from his knuckles."   
  
"The claws can be controlled by his forelimb muscles, any sharp snap of tendons can draw them out and be used to his advantage, but are also contractible at the same degree." Her green eyes swept over the two men sitting in front of her, their faces seeming to be carved from rock. Their expressions were cold and hard and fixated, clearly impressed and interested in her report, or other things.   
  
She clicked off the slide machine of carefully charted pictures from portions of the actual procedure, which had been the only thing lighting the room. With a clap of her hands the small room was bathed in the iridescent glow of artificial light. The light was intense, except around the two dark men sitting side by side at the far end of a circular table.  
  
The far right man - Jackson Henderson - had silver glasses and snow white hair that barely covered his otherwise balding skull. His sharp, carved features seemed darker in the light, as if it shunned him. He was small and frail; seeming so weak that a mere fly landing on his shoulder would crush him.  
  
The far left man - Leonard Kindle - was much younger, barely out of his twenties and huge in comparison to Henderson. His head was crowned with a shock of congealed black hair that was swept back from his face as if he were going nowhere really, really fast. His deep purple eyes seemed to be more interested in her figure than the discussion itself.  
  
Both of the businessmen wore black pinstriped suits, dark ruby and satin blue ties shined under the lights. The men sat across the room from a large white wall from which the images had been projected onto during the discussion. And a woman stood at the bottom, looking at them as a teacher would look at her students.  
  
Her long black-streaked white hair was pulled halfway back behind her ears, the rest allowed to cascade down her slim shoulders. She had bright green eyes, an excellent factor to her perfectly crafted facial features. Ruby lips pursed and glimmered when she spoke and the white blouse and short silken skirt did it complete justice.  
  
"Now gentlemen, I've kept up my end of the bargain." She took a seat at the far end of the table, flipping a pen through her fingers as she watched Henderson pull a dark leather briefcase from the ground. He hesitantly placed the briefcase on the table, careful to keep his hands resting reassuringly on top.  
  
With a cautious look to Kindle, he opened the case with shaking hands; they were shaking more from fear than old age. His face seemed to ignite as he flipped it around, showing its contents to the woman before snapping it closed again.  
  
The woman rolled her eyes at the frail man, expecting his arrogance and distrust in her, but she still despised it. "Not so fast, you said you would have a sample for us to inspect." Henderson turned to his partner who nodded and stood, beginning to leave.  
  
"Wait!" She called after them, standing with a mask of surprise glued across her face. "I was hoping that it would be extracted by now, but the sample has not yet been taken from his skeleton. You have to understand, we're talking about in indestructible metal alloy secured to his bones."  
  
"Then you and I are not the only one's out of luck, miss." Henderson began to turn toward the door again, but the woman said something that struck interest in his head. "But-, I do have the specimen from which the sample would have come from, if you would like to see him...I can make arrangements..."  
  
"How much?" Henderson flipped around surprisingly quick for his elderly age, his eyes were wide like a starved dog looking at a piece of meat just close enough for him to reach. "Ten hundred-thousand dollars, all in advance."  
  
"No!" Henderson's eyes seemed to bulge out of his head as he heard the amount. "Nothing's worth that much!"  
  
"Oh really..." She spat, and suddenly Henderson's fragile frame was engulfed into twisting and devouring flames that made him nothing more than a pile of ashes in five seconds, giving him barely enough time to move, let alone scream. His suit and flesh melted instantly, casting the room a stench that made Kindle want to puke.   
  
"Even your life?" The woman pursed, snapping her neck calmly as if old cranky men suddenly burst into flames all the time around her work.   
  
Kindle's eyes were as wide as cantaloupes as he stared down at his use-to-be partner who lay in a smoldering pile of dark dust. The briefcase lay perfectly untouched beside his glossy black wingtip shoes.  
  
"Wh-What the hell hap-happened to him!?" Kindle's pallor was dead white with fright and his knees shook as he stood there. The woman was almost certain the poor boy had wet himself, but she had more important things to think about.   
  
"Call it spontaneous combustion..." She smirked wickedly as if she knew what had really happened to him. "Would you still care to see the specimen? I'll make an exception for you, only because you're kind of cute."   
  
"Y-Yes..." He stuttered, reaching down with a shaky hand to grab the briefcase from the ground, scattering a small dust of the remnants of Henderson across the floor. He clenched his lips and swallowed back the risen bile in his throat, the sooner he got away from this place, the better he would be.   
  
He followed the woman obediently down the hall, a short walk from the conference room they had just been in. They stopped in front of a large metallic door that stretched up to the ceiling and looked to be wide enough to let a car in.  
  
The woman pulled out a silver card and pushed it into a slot. As the door slid open with a whisper of hydraulics, they were suddenly illuminated with green light. Kindle's jaw literally dropped to the floor as he took in the immense vicinity before him.  
  
Machines and high-tech equipment crowded the floor and walls, any flat space they could. In the center of the room was an elevated bed on a tangle of hydraulics, there was the man curled on a steel bed.   
  
The man was stripped of his upper clothes; but a blanket was pulled up across his hips. Tubes and wires hung and twisted from his body like chaotic serpents, making him look like a psycho's science experiment.   
  
He was lying on his side with a giant device across his back that reached around and clamped his arms to his sides. The device encircled him and forced his hands into two metal gloves with metal claws held out. And judging from the peculiar bulges from beneath the blanket, the device continued across his thighs and ankles.   
  
"Come," The woman coaxed the awestruck man closer to the table. "Think about it Mr. Rappel, you're now standing in the future. Everything you see here is the building block of human evolution." She approached a blank computer screen and with a few flips of switches and a couple buttons, the screen was filled with a sharp picture of a computer-generated image of a single strand of DNA. The DNA strand rotated slowly, filling most of the screen with its diverse grouping of red, blue, green, purple, and yellow dots.   
  
"This is a regular human DNA strand, notice the green dots representing the carbon in the helical phosphate ester chains. Now watch as I bring up a picture of Mr. Logan's DNA." She went intently to work, looking over her shoulder to make sure the contemptuous Mr. Kindle lugging the briefcase was paying attention. "There."  
  
A picture of another DNA strand materialized quickly on the screen, looking exactly like a regular strand of DNA except for the difference of a quadruple helix and-  
  
"So what's happened to the green carbon thingies?" Kindle scrutinized the screen once more time before turning back to the man on the table. For the first time he noticed that the man was fully conscious, his eyes stayed locked on Kindle, and the man had a look that sent a chill down Kindle's spine. A metal mask that cupped his chin and bridged over his nose was securely fastened across his face.   
  
"The helical phosphate in the ester chains?" The woman repeated coldly, trying hard to ignore Kindle's interruption. The green carbon had mutated into a white. "They've been altered by the indestructible alloy called adamantium."  
  
"Adamantium? Isn't that what was put into his skeleton?" He peeked back to the man who only stared at him with cold, dark eyes. Dark strips of hair ran down the sides of the man's face, disappearing beneath the metal mask as if to conceal themselves.   
  
"Yes." She said simply.  
  
"But why would someone want to do something like that?" Kindle said, suddenly becoming impatient and anxious. He frequently glanced behind him to make sure that the man was still immobile, even though he knew the poor creature could hardly breathe; he had to reassure himself.   
  
"Experimentation." She said solemnly as if she felt sorry for the man to which this happened, but from her facial features, there was no emotion to her words. And from what it looked like, she was doing just the same thing to the man again, in a way.  
  
"That's sick."   
  
"No, that's science." The woman corrected with an unflattering smile.  
  
"Okay." Rappel didn't want to push the subject matter any farther than he had to. "So how would someone survive something like this?"  
  
"His genetic enhancement." Her eyes glinted eerily in the green lights, the estranged shadows dancing and breaking across her face.   
  
"I beg your pardon?" Though she had already told him about Logan's abilities, the fright in the conference room had nearly scared the shit out of him, so he had forgotten at least ninety percent of the discussion.  
  
She turned back to him and pointed a slim and delicate hand to the screen, her fingertip following the slow rotation of the strand. "See the third and forth helix on the DNA when there should only be two?"  
  
"Yes," Kindle leaned closer to the screen, nodding his head.   
  
"As I was trying to tell you before, Mr. Logan has the special ability to regenerate damaged or even destroyed tissue." She smiled gleefully, as a child would do when receiving a present.  
  
"So?" Kindle shook his head, not understanding.  
  
"So..." She walked away towards the back of the lab, returning with a small pistol into her newly gloved hands. She paced back over to a monitor and screwed around with some buttons before a loud hum sang in the room.  
  
Kindle followed the sound until his eyes met a small camera being lowered from the ceiling, just above the man's leg. She wrapped her fingers around a joystick and moved the camera to the exact spot at which she wanted it. She then flipped another switch and a close-up picture of the blanket flooded the screen.  
  
The focus was at full zoom, close enough to see the fibers that had been laced together to make the blanket. The woman approached the man and folded the blanket up off of his leg, revealing the thread of his jeans. She then stepped atop a chair that sat next to the table, spreading her legs as far as her skirt would let her to keep her balance.  
  
"It takes roughly two weeks for a human being to heal from a penetrated wound." She pushed back a strand of loose hair before bringing both her hands out in front of her with the gun pointed straight at the immobile man's leg.  
  
"Oh god..." Kindle whispered under his breath, making a wild glance over to the man's face once again, seeing fear and bravery battle across his face. Even though Kindle's heart didn't have much room for compassion, he still sent his hopes to the poor creature. Human or mutant, it still felt pain.   
  
"Watch." She took aim, closing one eye to sharpen her accuracy, and took a deep breath.  
  
*No!* Kindle thought suddenly. At first he thought he had screamed the word, but his lips had only parted to take a silent breath. The bullet left the barrel with a screaming *bang* and ripped through the air with no mercy. And as far as Kindle was concerned, this cold-blooded bitch had no mercy.  
  
He instinctively threw himself to the floor, hearing the startled cry of the man then a deathly silence. After he had recollected himself, he slowly got to his knees, peeking over the edge of equipment to see the woman calmly climb down from atop the chair, dusting off her blouse.   
  
"What the hell did you do that for?!" Kindle screamed as the woman strode back over to a counter and set down the gun, instead picking up a handkerchief. Then she came back to stand next to Kindle, who had gone deathly white in the face.  
  
"Watch the screen Mr. Kindle." She said calmly, indifferent to his outburst. She looked down at her suit, gingerly brushing away the splattered blood that dotted it. She only looked up once to make sure the experiment had gone as planned.   
  
The screen showed an extreme close up of the puncture and the ferocity of the wound she had inflicted. The flesh had been ripped apart; gushing fluids of different colors all around. For a split second he thought he saw the glint of metal behind the blood and puss but he couldn't be sure.  
  
*No, no!* His mind screamed. *This can't be happening! How in the -?* Rappel was glued to the screen, half out of horror and half out of pure amazement as he witnessed a miracle happen before him.  
  
The man's torn flesh had somehow immediately stopped bleeding and was now growing together, reaching across the puncture with molasses hands to grab on and connect the torn flesh. Until within at least five minutes, there was nothing to indicate the wound but a hole in the man's jeans and splattered blood across the camera lens.  
  
"That's amazing!" Kindle choked out.  
  
"No." The woman corrected. "That's science."  
  
"The Price of Survival" Is To Be Continued...  



	3. The Price Of Survival - Chapter 3 : Meta...

TITLE: The Price Of Survival  
AUTHOR: Ananova Crowe ||^_^||  
  
  
  
Metallica: Poor Twisted Me (cont.)  
  
So tell me why you've chosen me  
Don't want your grip; don't want your greed  
  
I'll tear me open, make you gone  
No more can you hurt anyone  
And the fear still shakes me  
So hold me, until it sleeps  
  
It grips you, so hold me  
It stains you, so hold me  
It hates you, so hold me  
It holds you, so hold me  
  
~*~  
  
The Price of Survival Chapter .3 - Metallic Animals  
  
(Sum up chapter before: Jean has entered Logan's mind and sees how he was kidnapped and another person's admittance into the remaining shards of Magneto's Brotherhood for some odd reason. She then finds out that Logan somehow ends up as another lab experiment with an unknown woman demonstrating on him and a bullet hole in his leg.)   
  
*Jean is still in Logan's mind; present*   
  
Logan awoke with a start, feeling the mud and sweat and blood still streaked across his face. His heart thundered loudly in his head until he commanded it to calm, this was not the time to get excited. It took him a moment to find where he was from his eyesight, which stayed a gray haze.  
  
Bones that he didn't even know he had ached with damage or strain when he tried unsuccessfully to move. It took him even longer to figure out that the cruel device that had locked around him from his dream was really clasped around his body. All except for the mask across his face, which still wasn't much of a comfort.  
  
His claws had been pulled outside from beneath his skin, held out and useless in two metal gloves that splayed his fingers and ran up to his elbows, locking his arms to his side. The cold metal bit down into his skin, pulling his flesh when he tried to move.  
  
He searched quickly for something to get him loose, anything that could help him. Until his eyes fell upon a young girl about the age of fourteen lying on a medical bed close enough for Logan to recognize her, even with his blurred vision.  
  
She had been the one lying on the ground before he had been attacked in the forest, the little girl with the glowing rose. For that, Logan felt absolutely no pain or mercy for her, no matter if she had done nothing to him.  
  
The girl muttered something and turned over with a bit of effort, her face flinching in pain as she rolled onto her other side. Her silent and sleeping face was calming to Logan; all except for the lines snaking out from her arms and the silver microchips along her shoulders and neck, which made her look unreal.  
  
She was stripped down to her skin except for a sterile white dressing was wound around her chest and midsection, covering the still bleeding wound at her stomach. Leaving her shoulders bare and open to the chill of the room, shivering slightly. A soft blanket had fallen down over her legs, but Logan doubted that the girl could reach down and pull it back up by herself.   
  
He was about to shift his eyes somewhere else when he saw two pockets of aligned skin in the middle of her back. They were thin and wide, almost like an opening for something that was hidden inside of her back, under her flesh.  
  
Logan shook his head, tearing his eyes away from the girl and focussing back to getting himself free of the device that claimed him immobile in all aspects. His body screamed for him to quit straining, but he ignored it, taking all his risks blindly and shoving them behind him.   
  
"There is no escape Logan," A voice carried out from behind him, it was cold and lacked emotion. Despite the deficiency, Logan could tell that the voice belonged to someone real, someone who he had unsuccessfully killed in the past.  
  
"Mystique..." Logan spat as if the words were acid in his mouth, he quit struggling to get free and waited until she came into his view, her blue body shining gorgeously in the light. She took no time to walk over to the girl and lean over her protectively, checking her lines.  
  
"What happened to her?" Despite the fact that he didn't much care, he asked anyway, figuring he wasn't going anywhere soon.  
  
"The same thing that you did to me..." Mystique hissed like an enraged snake, pointing down to the three pink scars at the brim of the bottom of her ribcage. Her yellow eyes blazed in fury, widening until them seemed to glow.   
  
"So that's who I got, that's a shame. Too bad I didn't aim higher on you though..." Logan spat, not satisfied with his penetration point on Mystique's belly. He regretted not killing her, or not staying around long enough for him to make sure she died.  
  
"You had no right..." Mystique hissed, shoving her intense blue face three inches away from Logan's. He could feel her icy breath on his lips, and she could feel his breath ignited by a thousand hell's on her lips.  
  
"I thought the Brotherhood didn't take kindly to compassion..." Logan tested her, looking deep into her eyes as if to look into the soul she didn't have. She stared back as intensely, trying in vain to penetrate his mind and see what he was thinking.  
  
"If you haven't noticed lately Logan, there is no Brotherhood." Her eyes suddenly turned soft as she said that, missing her leader, Magneto. Then she hardened again, remembering what she had in her clutches on. "But isn't it amazing how the word mutant is so close to the word mutiny?"  
  
"The war between humans and mutants is approaching, and there will be an uprising. But poor Wolverine is stuck without any relief. Whatever will you do?" She pushed back from him, leaning back against a countertop with her hands spread out to support her.  
  
"Get to the point. What do you want with me?" Logan seethed.   
  
"Your partnership..." Another voice came from someone standing in the room that he couldn't see, maybe hiding behind something. Logan looked back to Mystique, following her eyes to nothing by her side.  
  
Then suddenly, an outline of someone's head melted out of thin air, then melting down in the shape of shoulders and a woman's torso. Continuing to melt out of the air as an outline of a lean stomach and hips, before finally solidifying into a beautiful woman who stood the same size as Mystique.  
  
Bright blue eyes seemed to shine in the green light, glinting awkwardly as they stared at him resolutely. Her pale skin was almost translucent and even from his distance; Logan could make out the veins in the top of her chest. She wore a long-sleeved white shirt that had a low hanging collar.  
  
Black leather pants clung tight to her legs, looking incredibly uncomfortable for her liquid washed body. Her shortly cropped blonde hair hung choppy along the sides of her face. It was segmented as though she had just gotten out of a pool long enough for her hair to only begin to dry.  
  
"Vanish." She introduced herself, not stopping for a moment to continue to explain the situation. "With you, the human race would not stand a chance against us. We would overrule and dominate them, stopping all violence against mutants."  
  
"That's where the problem lies sister, what if I say no?..." Logan said as if he had fair game in their little charade they threw out in front of him.   
  
"Than we have no choice but to destroy you..." Vanish walked silently over to the girl, leaning close to gently kiss her on the shoulder before standing and slowly stroking the girl's hair. "From the inside out..."  
  
Logan's killer left eyebrow arched in confusion, his dark eyes flashing to Mystique who only smiled wickedly, letting her teeth shine through. Logan returned his eyes to Vanish, thinking of her words as much as he dared.  
  
"No." Logan said directly, he was not prepared to join the hanging threads of the Brotherhood, no matter what conditions they were under. And he wasn't going to join them because of some little threat, that was for sure.  
  
"When you skewered her yesterday, she had already lost so much blood that I could not use my healing powers to save her. You, Mr. Logan, punctured one of her lungs and tore her intestines apart just enough to make her die slowly, with more pain than we could ever inflict upon you." Vanish knew that once Logan made a decision, he kept it until the bitter end, which was a pity for him.  
  
"So?" Logan asked simply, watching Vanish intently.  
  
"But from your abduction yesterday, we witnessed your healing ability as much more powerful than mine and may prove useful to save her life." Vanish said, suggesting that she had been the one that Logan had thrown against the tree.   
  
"I don't transfer my powers to others..." Logan didn't quite get that.  
  
"That matters little to us, after all..." Mystique suddenly shifted into the woman from his dreams, the one who had shot him in the leg as an experiment. "It's science..." With a smile, Mystique shifted smoothly back into her regular form.  
  
She walked over to him and pulled down the blanket, revealing a hole in his jeans at his thigh, which was crusted with blood that smelled recent to Logan's enhanced senses. He suddenly realized that he had not been dreaming, that the entire experiment had actually happened and he had really been shot.  
  
"We'll be back in the morning. Meanwhile you need some rest, to keep yourself strong for tomorrow." Vanish smiled and stroked the girl's hair one last time before following Mystique out of the room.  
  
"Oh yes," Vanish came back to Logan's side, pulling a metal mask with a single segmented metal tube snaking out from the middle for oxygen. She pulled the black strap at the back of the mask across the back of his head, securing it tightly. "Can't have you waking us."  
  
Logan's eyebrows dropped into a mean scowl as Vanish leaned down and kissed him lightly on the cheek like a mother. Her lips felt like ice to his skin, and when they left his cheek, he could feel the point of contact tingle as heat returned to it. "Sleep well." And with the hiss of a metal door, she was gone and he was plunged into complete blackness.  
  
~*~   
  
"Good morning. I hope you got a sufficient amount of sleep last night. I know I did." Logan awoke to the icy words, dropping his eyebrows immediately into a scowl, showing his animosity towards her.  
  
"Bad Wolverine, we'll have none of that." She scolded as if he were a misbehaving dog. She took her icy, pale hand and combed it through his hair, petting him nicely before walking out of his view.   
  
It took Logan a minute to realize that they had moved him during the night, clamping him spread-eagle to another horizontal medical bed set on hydraulics. The blood and sweat and dirt had been washed from his face, or he had become so use to it that he couldn't feel it anymore.  
  
He was surprised to find that he was free to move his head, so he took no time into looking down at himself, making sure they hadn't done anything else to him. But from the looks of it, they hadn't. He was still dressed in his worn blue jeans, his Indian-head buckle shining bright in the lights.  
  
The cuffs at his wrists and ankles cut into his skin, making it impossible to move. He relaxed back against the cold, hard surface of the table, the coldness comforting to his bare back and shoulders.  
  
He stiffened when he heard the hiss of hydraulics and twisted his head to the side, seeing the girl in the same position as him, except she had no clamps on her wrists or ankles. The dressing at her stomach had a bloom of crimson blood pushing through, giving color to her drained and tired features.  
  
"What's with the rose?" Logan asked to someone who he sensed close by, noticing the magnificent rose was glowing brighter than ever, a tiny blue flame ignited above it's crimson head.   
  
"It holds her essence," Vanish explained, hooking a line into Logan's arm with a sharp prick. She glanced up to look at the rose, impressed with its beauty. "Well, the part that won't fit." She said with a smile, backing away again.  
  
"Into what?" Logan was almost afraid to ask, but he was left unanswered. Without a word, Mystique walked silently by and returned the oxygen mask to his face that had been removed during the night. The stale, metallic tasting air swept into his nose and mouth, stinging his throat.   
  
Suddenly, the bed began to rise on the hydraulics, the bottom dropping down so he was now rising vertically. His weight shifted down to his ankles, the restraints biting into his wrists as they threatened to pull his hands apart from his arms.  
  
"Congratulations Wolverine. You'll be the first ever to actually supply the life to someone who should already be dead..." Vanish called up with a wicked smile, she was small from the height he was rising at, and he was partially glad to get away from her.  
  
He looked up, seeing the top of his head about three feet from the high roof as his bed hissed to a stop. He took another look down, seeing Vanish rush to help Mystique at the girl's side. They both had her around the shoulders, supporting her as they helped her off the bed and stood reeling on weak knees.  
  
Then Vanish leaned down and whispered something into her ear that made the girl's eyes ignite into a fearsome red light. She reminded Logan of Scott when he got really angry and his visor began to glow. He almost smiled at the thought of ol' four-eyes, but he was pulled from the thought as he witnessed something incredible below him.  
  
Something white and smooth began to grow from the girl's back, undoubtedly from the two holes Logan had seen the day before when the girl lay unconscious beside him. Even from his height he could see two folded rods elevating from her back before spreading wide to show a connection covered with bright, white feathers.  
  
Her dark face further illuminating her angel wings until the wings appeared to glow as brightly as the rose, which looked as if it might explode with power. The girl seemed to transfer her power and anger to and from the rose, before screaming in rage and lifting from the ground.  
  
She fluttered there for a moment, her feet barely off of the ground as she grew accustomed to flight. Her huge, beautiful wings flapped lightly, kicking up tiny clouds of dust from the floor and throwing them to the side. Then she shifted her weight until they were on her wings and shot upward, twisting like a spiraling torpedo.  
  
She blurred as she flew swiftly through the air, pushing her arms out in front of her as if she were prepared to dive into a pool. But she arched and was aimed straight in the middle of Logan's chest, her eyes blazing with fire.  
  
Logan tried in vain to duck or do anything to get out of the way, but his restraints held him fast to the table. His mouth opened to scream, but at the impact and velocity at which Knightmare hit him, he did nothing but tense.   
  
Which was stupid to do and he knew it, but only after he heard the sickening crack of a bone and an intense pain sang out through his entire leg, numbing it with agony. Only after he felt the girl take pose in his spread-eagle position and fill his bones and body, he found his voice as loud a roar that he shook the building and everything within.  
  
The small glass windows high on the walls seemed to immediately shatter, his roar echoing brutally off the walls to come ricocheting back even louder than before. Knightmare's hands crept through his arms like an internal fire, searing everything it touched but slowly enough for him to get as much pain out of it as he could.  
  
His body felt like it was being torn apart from the inside, each of his intestines being set aflame before bursting into a pure white ball of pain. Soon, it was too much for him to take and he fell unconscious, letting his wrists hold his weight as he fell limp against the table.  
  
She was feeding off of him, stealing his powers from his veins and gorging herself to heal her own wounds, taking his body as a protective shell and never vowing to leave. Even through his unconsciousness, Logan could feel the pain in his entire body, sucking him dry of energy and essence.  
  
~*~  
  
"Look!" Scott pointed through the front of the jet to a flash of brilliant red light before the forest returned to normal. "There was a flash of light..." He explained, knowing that Storm could not have gotten up to the front fast enough to see it while the flash happened.  
  
Jean screamed and fell to her knees, clutching her head in pain as the last of the brainwaves penetrated her mind. Before anyone could touch her, she was upright with her eyes clutched closed, looking for something.  
  
"No...No!" She yelled in frustration. "I lost him!" She collapsed back against the control panel in the nose of the Blackbird jet, still collecting herself after the last painful thread of Logan's mind had been ripped loose of her grip.  
  
"What is it? What happened?" Storm looked worried and rushed to her side, taking a quick glance back to Scott who was piloting the jet and couldn't look back at the moment. They were passing low over the forest; the jetlag shaking the treetops as they swept inches away from the tips.  
  
They had been following Jean's link to Logan's mind to get his location, but suddenly she had lost it. Sharing his mind also shared his pain, and at their disconnection, Jean had felt the full force of his pain as his brain suddenly seemed to be overwhelmed by something, or someone.  
  
"He's gone! I lost the connection when Scott saw the light!" Jean tried desperately again to reach his mind, but it was as if someone had thrown up an impenetrable wall between their minds and was not prepared to pull it down anytime soon.   
  
"Then that'll be the first place we look..." Scott said under his breath, pulling the jet into a U-turn back to the location the light had come from. He landed the jet smoothly in a clearing; feeling it unimportant to give himself cover, but making it easy for a fast get away.  
  
Jean, Storm, and Cyclops stuck together as they slunk through the forest, keeping their ears open and their eyes sharp. "You are sure it was here?" Storm asked skeptically, figuring that every inch of the forest looked almost exactly the same as the rest.  
  
"Yes, I sense others..." Jean began, bringing her fingertips to her temples as she concentrated hard on following the strange brainwaves. "There..." One of her hands left her head and pointed out in front of her toward an unusually crowded tangle of trees. Their limbs reached and twisted around each other, fighting as they spiraled up towards the light.  
  
Storm, Cyclops, and Jean all broke into a run towards the trees. Cyclops to the side of his visor with his gloved hand and expertly blasted away some spindling limbs, revealing a brick wall with moss and lichen growing in the cracks and along the bricks.   
  
"I don't think they'll be expecting visitors this time of day. So perhaps we should knock." Cyclops quipped as he discharged the powerful optic blast form his eyes, shattering through the wall as if it was nothing but a piece of paper. He stepped in carefully and surveyed the surroundings, beckoning the woman to follow him before he was gone into the darkness.  
  
"Let's just find Logan and get out, this place is giving me the creeps," Jean commented, brushing away a spider web before it could catch her face. She looked blindly into the pitch-black room, hearing only the sound of constantly dripping water from a loose pipe somewhere in the room and the X-Men's almost silent footsteps.  
  
"Then allow me to shed some light on your location," A Russian voice burst through the room like an earthquake ripping through the ground. Suddenly, a torch hanging high at the far wall ignited with a blazing orange flame. Another hanging torch took flame, followed by another and another until the room was almost completely lighted by at least twelve different torches.   
  
Only the far-left corner was left untouched by the bright fingers of the light, as if it was shunned and held back from the corner. "Who the..." Cyclops began, preparing to flash his beam into the corner to ignite it, but his words were cut short when something emerged from the shadows.  
  
A tall, well-built man with dark skin levitated out from the shadows, he wore complete black, a dark cape flipping gently around the top of his boots. The torchlight broke and scattered across his face, making him appear fearsome as he scoured down on the intruders.   
  
"I am Flame. And you three have just signed your death deeds by your untimely interruption." He slowly floated downward, carefully distancing himself from the three X-Men and landing silently on the floor.   
  
"Ready?" Jean said quietly and turned to face her fiancé, but suddenly Cyclops was ripped from the floor and thrown high into the air, scuffing the ceiling before gravity's hand beckoned him back to earth.  
  
"Jean!" Cyclops yelled down as he reached frantically for anything to hold onto, suddenly he found a pipe and wrapped both his hands tightly around it, preying that it would support his weight. The pipe creaked and shifted, but it sustained its connection to the roof, for the time being.  
  
Flame laughed wickedly, enjoying the moment, he loved watching Cyclops' feet dangle helplessly in the air. It had been too easy to dispose of the boy, and it would be even easier to destroy the two women.  
  
Storm widened her stance and let her eyes become a milky white, pushing all of her power into a giant tornado that suddenly shrieked through the room, only touching down long enough by Flame's side to pick him up and smash him brutally against the wall.  
  
The impact was so hard that the cement began to crumble, huge cracks reached up to the roof and started a chain-reaction in the ceiling. Suddenly, huge cement blocks began to fall, kicking up plumes of gray dust from the floor.  
  
"Look out!" Jean yelled as she ran towards Storm, throwing herself against Storm and pushing her out of the way as an immense chunk of ceiling crashed down where she had just been standing. Jean rolled off and jumped to her feet, looking up to see Scott still dangling perilously from the pipe.  
  
"Get me down!" Cyclops cried out, feeling the pipe begin to tear away from the ceiling, as long cracks snaked towards him, massing and joining as more chunks of ceiling fell away. One large piece crashed down on Cyclops' right hand, knocking that arm loose.   
  
He held on preciously with one arm, his crushed fingers going numb and useless. He tried desperately to throw his dead hand back around the pipe, but his limp fingers slipped lazily off. The pipe suddenly began to sweat and cold water began to drip on his shoulder from a break in the connection above him.  
  
He could feel his leather glove begin to slowly slide around the slick pipe, the condensation making the pipe slippery as if he were holding onto a piece of ice. *That's it!* He screamed in his mind. "Storm, give me a blizzard up here!"  
  
Storm nodded, as she understood what he had meant and her dark, beautiful eyes suddenly turned completely white again. Cyclops could feel the icy winds twirl about him, reaching up to clasp the pipes and freeze them together. Though it would begin to melt soon, it gave Cyclops a minute or two extra to figure out something to do.   
  
"You must hurry, the ice will not last long in this-" Storm was suddenly smashed against the wall by a giant ball of flame that struck her in the back, knocking her hard into the cement and sending another downpour of ceiling to come crashing down.  
  
"Heat?" Flame finished for her, calmly dusting the ashes from his shoulders, a huge gash slit across his face. "Allow me to compensate..." Flame opened his mouth unbelievably wide, unhooking his jaws, as a snake would do before eating, and sent giant blast of fire towards Cyclops.   
  
"No!" Cyclops yelled as the pipe began to creak and groan at the sudden fluctuations of temperature. Then, the pipe could no longer take it, and gave way from the ceiling with an ear-splitting shriek of creaking metal. Cyclops released the pipe just as it was about to swing sideways and smash him into the wall.   
  
"Jean!" Cyclops yelled as he fell swiftly through the air, his arms and legs flailing as if by some miracle he would take flight. But the ground came closer and closer, threatening to swallow him up and crush him like an insect.  
  
Suddenly, he was slowed by an invisible force that pushed up on him, easing him gently to the ground. It took him a moment to realize that Jean was using her telekinetic powers to help drop him to the ground. She was intensely involved in getting him safely to the ground, her eyes closed and her back turned to their assailant, which was an incredibly bad idea.  
  
Just as Cyclops was about eight feet away from the ground, Jean's telekinetic energy suddenly pulled away from under him and he tumbled the rest of the way onto a hard, unfortunately placed chunk of ceiling.   
  
The mass collided hard into his side, sending him spinning onto his other shoulder before finally coming to rest strewn about the ashes of the ceiling. Everything in his body hurt, except for his right hand, which he couldn't even feel, but he knew he'd broken a lot of fingers, if not all.  
  
He lifted his head just in time to see Jean skid to a stop along the pavement, her limp body flipping uncontrollably as she tumbled over remnants of the ceiling and debris, only stopping when she smashed against the wall.  
  
Flame flipped on his heel as a giant thunderclap echoed through the room, coming from the direction of one very beautiful, very pissed woman whose eyes were dead white and blonde hair standing on end, with blue cracks of electricity transferring between them.  
  
"Have you ever wondered if a flame can get burnt?" Storm asked, her voice seeming to echo like the thunderclap before. With that, a huge blue streak of lightening barreled down out of nowhere and hit Flame squared in the chest, knocking him through the wall and on through at least three other cement walls before he came to smoking, limp pile of corpse four rooms away.  
  
"Apparently so..." Storm allowed herself a smile of triumph and hurried to help Jean, who still laid sprawled unconscious against the east wall. Storm commanded the presence of a light shower over Jean's head, waking her with a coughing fit.  
  
"Let's find Logan and get out of here..." Jean croaked as her coughing fit ended, she allowed Storm to help her to her feet. Both women looked back to see Cyclops stumbling through the debris, struggling to walk.  
  
"Scott, are you alright?" Storm called out, leaving her arm about Jean to help support her friend as they depended on each other. "Nothing that can't be fixed," Scott grimaced as he cradled his crushed hand close to his chest and limped as fast as he could to catch up with them.  
  
~*~  
  
"Get back," Cyclops ordered in a hollow voice, the fall had taken a lot out of him and he was bleeding in numerous places, as were the others. They looked like an incredibly miserable rescue party, but it's all that Logan had to depend on.   
  
He poked his head through the hole Flame had created in the wall, checking to see if the coast was clear. "Come on..." With that, he disappeared into the darkness, the two women following with weary steps.  
  
"He's got to be around here somewhere..." Cyclops mumbled to himself, taking a look down to his hand cradled against his chest. His gloves were sticky and wet with blood, and he knew it would be an incredibly excruciating effort to get them off.  
  
He cringed to even think about it, forcing himself to look further into the darkness, his visor barely illuminating their way through the huge, dark building. "What's that?" Jean asked softly, her voice weak and hoarse. She pointed with a shaky hand to a strip of green light peeking from the bottom of a closed door some way up the wall.  
  
"I bet it's what we're looking for..." Cyclops said, quickening his pace as fast as his body would let him. He burst through the door, igniting all the X-Men in a florescent green light. The room was huge, like a giant warehouse crowded with all the greatest medical instruments and experimental equipment in the world.  
  
There was a small whisper of footfalls and Cyclops turned his head just in time to see a shadow slink behind a rather large piece of equipment. He followed cautiously, trying to quiet his footsteps until they couldn't be heard. He held his breath, not daring to make a single sound.   
  
Suddenly, something leapt from the shadows and latched onto his back, a blue-scaled arm wrapping around his neck with three nine-inch long claws protruding from their knuckles. The claws were at his neck in an instant, the other hand secure on his wrist.  
  
"Mystique..." He breathed, the claws pushing harder into his neck as he felt her icy breath ruffling the side of his hair, right above his ear. He loosened his body, preparing to do something that had to work exactly or he would die a bloody, painful death.  
  
With fluid motion, he twisted his body around and flipped Mystique expertly over his shoulder, slamming her to the ground. The claws retracted as she jumped up to her feet, taking on the attack as fast as Cyclops had to take a breath. Her feet flew straight at him, not giving him enough time to duck or jump to the side.  
  
The balls of her feet struck him squarely in the middle of the chest and the next thing he knew he was flying backward and smashing into the giant piece of machinery. He recovered quickly and rolled, as he had been trained to do, and came up on his feet just as soon as a large panel slammed to the ground.  
  
Sparking wires and the smell of burnt leather ignited the room with excitement, casting abnormal shadows across the wall with every crackle of a spark. Cyclops could feel where he hadn't gotten away from the machinery fast enough, his shoulders stung and he could feel the leather melt to his skin.  
  
Mystique took his recovering time to cower behind another hunk of equipment, waiting for her strike, as a lion would do if stocking a gazelle in the African plain. Her yellow eyes were wide and she licked her lips, already hearing the snap of his bones beneath her hands and the final choked cry of her victim as she killed him.  
  
Cyclops quieted his erratic breath, ignoring the pain in his shoulders and body. Feeling had already begun to return to his crushed fingers, which was not something to wallow in. His feeling came in pulses of agonizing pain, as if his heart was pumping the pain into his hand to punish him.   
  
Still he stayed quiet, listening carefully for anything that might give Mystique away. He hoped to god the women were fairing well by themselves, he had no doubt in them, but he still had to be sure.  
  
He couldn't chance a blink or he knew she would have him right where she wanted him. So he stood completely still in plain view of anything, luckily giving himself an ample amount of visual field.   
  
~*~  
  
Jean stumbled backward as a solid kick struck her hard in the stomach, struggling to keep her balance from the impact. She flashed a glance towards Storm who's head snapped back as a wet fist struck her in the face, sending her in a backward summersault before crashing to the ground, face-first.  
  
"Storm!" Jean called out to her friend, kicking up into a shimmering contour of a real mutant who was about to attack her again. It was like kicking a sodden sponge, but she could feel bones smash beneath the toe of her boot as she watched the shimmering woman tumble backwards and splatter to the ground.  
  
Their invisible attacker had come from the shadows, making her assault swift and harsh, putting up a good fight between the two X-Men simultaneously. The only forthcoming to her was the drip of water from her arms and legs, which still wasn't much of a helper.  
  
She struck like a cobra, taking individual attacks on each of the women with one, swift action. Her movements were almost slowed a bit, like running a race in sodden shorts, taking her longer to swing her arms and legs.  
  
But what she lacked in speed, she made up for in power. Her kicks and punches were so hard that Jean often found herself sprawled on the floor with an intense pain in her head or stomach.  
  
Storm and Jean spun on their heels as an intense red beam ricocheted off the cement floor; another one X-ing past it as two Cyclops' battled it out between each other. Mystique had turned to duplication in case Jean or Storm had decided to interfere in their fight without invitation.  
  
Vanish took this moment of precious time to stage her next attack on the oblivious women, her sodden footsteps lost in the extreme battle between Mystique and Scott. Storm turned to face nothing, with wild glances from side to side for her attacker, until her eyes fell upon wet boot prints leading off towards Cyclops' battle.  
  
"Jean..." Storm said quietly and Jean turned with a vacant expression as she witnessed their attacker gone and the smiling face of Storm glinting awkwardly in the green light. "I've got an idea..."   
  
Within a few seconds and her telepathic powers, Jean suddenly knew what Storm's plan was without having her speak it out loud and create agitation if the liquid woman was watching. With swift footsteps, both women crept toward the intense fight of Mystique and Cyclops, keeping watch, as powerful red beams seemed to ricochet everywhere.  
  
Jean strategically placed herself along the line of puddle footprints, looking as if she was dumbfounded at her attacker's position above her. Vanish was perched high on a tall screen, watching the red-haired woman standing directly below her.  
  
This was perfect, she would jump down and if lucky, land right in front of the unsuspecting woman and knock her back against the equipment with a good kick in the head, killing her instantly. She let the smile slip as her watery lips split into a cruel sneer.  
  
With a quick inhale, Vanish jumped down with her legs braced out underneath her. She would use her knees as shocks and bounce herself up and twist horizontally to place her kick exactly where it needed to be.  
  
But just as she hit the ground and began to twist her body, a sudden hurricane of wind beat against her and an invisible force pushed her backward through the air. It took her a moment to realize that the two women were working together, the blonde-haired one making the wind and the redhead using her telekinetic abilities to push her.   
  
Undeviatingly in the direction of the large piece of equipment that Cyclops had broken a panel off of when he had hit it. It took her a moment to realize that she was flying backwards, tumbling head over heels into a tangle of broken, live wires. But it was a moment too late.  
  
Her body shook with electrocution as the wires stabbed and attacked her, burning her liquid flesh instantly and killing her quicker than that, ending her life without so much as an exhale. Soon, her blackened carcass was ashes strewn across the ground.  
  
Storm stepped forward and used her weather-controlling abilities to throw a small blizzard against the smoking machine. The crackle of sparks immediately silenced and bowed to the ice that froze and clung to the ends of the broken wires.  
  
There was a tense moment of utter silence before a stray beam recoiled from the side of a thick, metallic computer side and hit a gas pipe. The hiss of leaking gas was lost as more beams of frying electricity ignited and burned through the room.  
  
"Vanish!" Mystique screamed in rage, turning her attention from Cyclops long enough to see her friend fried to oblivion. Her eyes smoldered the most hatred that she had ever felt in her entire life, even more so than the loss of her love and master. Magneto.   
  
She felt pain, anguish, fear, anger, and incredible loss shudder down her spine as she turned back to take her rage out on the little man before her, but her movement was good and bad at the same time.   
  
Bad in the way that an intensely focussed beam struck her brutally in the arm, ripping off a good chunk of flesh, muscle, and even some bone. But good in the way that she had turned just in time to avoid being shot in the heart from where the beam was aimed before.  
  
She screamed out in pain and gave one last swift kick to the man's chest, sending him flying backwards onto the concrete floor before scrambling away to the clear entrance and fled off into the building. There was no point in battling three X-Men wounded and solo, no matter what it was worth.  
  
Storm was about to follow when Jean grabbed her by the sleeve of her uniform, shaking her head slowly. Her gaze averted back to her fiancé who lay unmoving on his back. She rushed to his side, slamming her knees hard against the ground as she stroked his hair with trembling fingers.  
  
He moaned when she her fingers touched him, his dim visor suddenly brightened as he opened his eyes. "Are you alright Scott?" She asked, gingerly brushing her fingers along the side of a gash along the border of his hair across his forehead.  
  
He flinched and acknowledged the fact she was there and caring for him, but he pushed his aching, protesting body up to stand on his wobbling legs. He allowed Jean to help support him as he re-cradled his arm across his chest; his head still pointed upward.  
  
"There he is..." Scott said unbelievably as he stared upward toward the ceiling, Jean followed his gaze until she found what he was looking at. "Oh my god..." She said unintentionally as realization and horror struck her square in the face.   
  
Storm exchanged a strange look between the two X-Men before following their gazes up to the battered, pale body of Logan. His head was rolled forward and down, facing them with an unconscious facade that looked like it had been mauled by a vulture.  
  
His limbs were spread wide, and even from their distance they could see that the bonds at his wrists were the only things holding him up. Blood and dirt streaked his bare chest and shone from his shoulders, giving him the appearance of a crucified man. "Is he?..." Storm began, afraid to finish her own sentence.   
  
"...No...no, not yet..." Jean's eyes were closed and she was looking deep inside his mind. "But there's something else..." She began, trying desperately to keep the fading shred of Logan's mind within her grip, but suddenly it died away.  
  
"Damn! I lost it..." Her shoulders dropped and she opened her eyes, looking desperately up to the unconscious man. Even though she no longer had a hold on his mind, she could feel his pain and war of emotion boiling deep within his soul.  
  
"Hold on!" Storm suddenly said, taking in the faint but recognized smell of vapor. "Gas...it is leaking somewhere in the room..." It definitely started leaking after Vanish had been thrown into the panel of live wires or the building would have exploded. As long as they didn't light a match or cause a spark, they would be fine.  
  
"We have to get him down..." Scott proposed, ripping his eyes away from Logan as he began to search through the shattered and tangled equipment strewn around the room. "There has to be a lever or something..." He began, then his eyes fell upon a rather large black button hanging from a single wire off a control panel.  
  
"But it's smashed and I doubt it'll work..." He began, trying it out anyway. Nothing happened, just as he had suspected. "I've got it!" As something hit him. "I could blast the hydraulic system and Jean you could..." He stopped as Jean thrust up her hand.  
  
She shook her head in shame, closing her eyes. "I don't have the energy to control him like that Scott," She almost wanted to scream at herself for giving up, but she knew that it was the truth.   
  
"I will help you, Jean. I will use my harness of the wind to help guide him as we did in the Statue of Liberty..." Storm suggested quietly, remembering his heroic save of Rogue that had almost cost him his life. Her dark eyes flicked over to Jean who sighed and raised her head, taking in Logan's beaten and unconscious form.  
  
"Alright, let's do it and get the hell out of here..." Jean said, huddling towards the two other X-Men, she tilted her head back completely and focussed on marshalling her strength as much as she could, eating up and gathering the scattered scraps of her powers and mind.   
  
"Okay, ready Scott?" Jean took charge, slowly opening her eyes to focus unmoving on Logan's calm face. Scott nodded as he rose his hand to the side of his visor, setting it to an extremely thin, focussed beam.  
  
He was going to have to get this in one shot or none; they were running out of time. The noxious smell of the gas soon became overwhelming, clogging their throats and coating their lungs. At such a focus, the beam of optic-energy would hit the third joint of the hydraulics without causing a spark, if he was perfectly aimed.  
  
With a deep inhale to relax himself, Scott clenched his teeth so tight he was afraid he might break them. But with complete control and handling of his power, he spoke without moving anything but his lips and tongue. "Ready?"  
  
The two women nodded, Storm's eyes beginning to cloud over a milky white and Jean's eyes intensified on Logan's face as she stretched out her arm to direct all the telekinetic energy she had gathered.   
  
"Here goes..." Scott said before another deep inhale and with the flick of his finger, the intensely focussed beam streaked through the air, coming to land perfectly where he wanted it to. Cutting the hydraulics loose enough to let the platform Logan was strapped to creak in protest before plummeting downward.  
  
Now it was up to the women who did everything in their power to slow it. Storm's eyes were so white they seemed to glow as a warm updraft swept through the room, pushing hard against the bottom of the platform as it plummeted through the air.   
  
Jean's hand shook as she forced herself to see the platform slowing enough for her to control, everything that happened she took in, an focussed hard on doing. From the speed of Storm's updraft to the tiniest quiver of one of Logan's hairs, she saw it all and controlled it all.  
  
As soon as it had started, it was over, and Logan was safely set upright on the floor. Jean collapsed in exhaustion, Scott able to catch her against his chest with his good arm, gently easing her to the floor. Storm rushed to help Logan, using her lock picking skills she had learned when she was younger, to free him from the bindings. She grunted as the large man fell limp into her arms.   
  
Though she had sturdy and strong arms, three hundred pounds of limp muscle, bone, and metal was not something easy to support, especially in her weakened condition. She gently eased him to the ground, leaning over him and putting her ear to his chest. She could hear the dull thumps of his heart beneath his ribcage.   
  
"He is alive," She concluded, lifting her head and turning to watch Cyclops gently slap Jean awake, she muttered something that neither could understand and quickly got to her feet, stumbling over to fall hard onto the cement next to Logan.   
  
"We have to get him out of here." She said as if she was fully recovered from everything they had just experienced. "Now. There's someone else here..." She could feel them creeping through the darkness, their pain, it made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.  
  
"Come on..." Jean lifted Logan's limp arm and struggled to lift him, only succeeding when Cyclops and Storm came in and helped her. With all three of them supporting the almost dead man, they slowly made their way from the room and down through the dimly lit hallway.  
  
They were halfway down the hall and close enough to the exit to see it when suddenly they heard a faint, but close footfall. All three X-Men stopped dead in their tracks, turning simultaneously to see a huge black man rise from the rubble.  
  
A downpour of blood hid his face and one of his arms had been smashed in a way that made Cyclops want to puke at the sight of it. His black clothes hung in tattered shreds from his body, barely clinging to stay on.  
  
He stumbled before catching himself on the wall with his almost good arm, his deep purple eyes intense with anger and fright. "If I must die...then...you..." His Russian accent slurred and his words became irregularly spaced and smashed together. "You...will...die...with...with...me..." He seemed to cough out the last word as he unhinged his jaws and prepared to send a fireball their way.  
  
Everything suddenly seemed to happen in slow motion. "No!" Cyclops screamed and instinctively dropped Logan to the ground, jumping on top of him to protect him. Storm and Jean did the same, completely smothering and covering the unconscious Logan with their bodies.  
  
A huge spherical flame spewed from the Flame's open jaws, and as soon as it touched the air, a ghostly blue explosion raced down the hallway, consuming everything in its path. It seemed to lick up all the air in the entire building, sucking it from their lungs and filling them with heat.  
  
The walls shattered and the ceiling crumbled in its path, sending huge chunks of the roof raining down on them. Then suddenly, the world thundered and became dark, merciless, and incredibly painful.  
  
~*~   
  
"Jean? Jean!" Cyclops yelled at his fiancée as he ripped away the remnants of the roof that were piled on top of her. The only way he saw her was her red hair sticking up out of the debris. He dusted away the residue from her back and gently turned her over, checking her pulse.  
  
She began to swat him away, fighting with him as she thought Flame had gotten a hold of her. "Jean...It's me...Scott..." He clamped his hand around her wrists until she opened her eyes and recognized him.  
  
"Oh Scott, you're alive..." She wrapped her arms about him, hugging him as tightly as she could in her weakened condition. "...Yeah...We have to get out of here..." He said, cringing in pain as she released him.  
  
"Where's Ororo?" Jean said, slowly getting to her feet and testing her legs. "Over here..." A weak voice came from behind a line of trees, untouched by the explosion. Suddenly, Storm emerged, limping a little. In the explosion, she had been lifted from Logan and thrown into the forest, crashing through a number of trees and breaking them cleanly in half.  
  
"Are you alright?" Jean said, rushing to her side. "I am alive if that is what you mean, but I am afraid our friend is not fairing quite as well as I." She looked back to a singed, collapsed body of Flame. She had landed on him on her descent to the ground, cushioning her with his burnt body, which eased her connection to the dirt.  
  
Storm suddenly began to fall, her left leg giving out beneath her. She was caught by Jean who helped hold her up with her arm around Storm's shoulder as the group slowly stumbled back to the Blackbird, which lay untouched by anything.  
  
After loading Storm into the jet, Jean and Scott headed back out in search of Logan, who was nowhere to be seen. Jean began to gingerly dig through the rubble of the building while Scott took his time winding through the front section of the forest surrounding the area they were in.  
  
The explosion had singed a couple acres in diameter, completely demolishing the entire building as if it had never been there. A few small fires still lived, scattered around as if to light the twilight that had already begun to fall on the forest. The moon shone bright in the velvet sky, shining as a beacon as if to say there was still hope.   
  
"Scott! I've found him!" Jean called out, loud enough that she was sure wherever her fiancé was he could hear her. Scott suddenly stumbled out through the forest and ran to her side, looking down on a pale, sick hand protruding out from the rubble.  
  
"We may be too late..." Scott said, beginning to pick the top pieces of rubble up and throwing them carefully to the side. If they were not careful, they could move the wrong stone and send an avalanche of rubble crashing down on Logan. Scott could only dig with one hand, which made the entire process awkward and longer.  
  
Within a few minutes, Logan's head and upper torso had been uncovered, along with one of his arms. A long bleeding gash ripped it's way from the top of his hand, all the way up the back of his forearm, to just below his elbow.  
  
He was bleeding from a number of gashes strewn across his head, neck, shoulders, and chest. All the rubble that had some how been wedged beneath him was covered in blood, dripping wet like rain.  
  
"Come on..." Scott said, carefully digging through the last of the wreckage covering Logan's legs. Jean helped, digging away until they could see the blue of his jeans; much of them soaked with blood, turning them maroon.  
  
Without saying anything, both wondered how from beneath all three X-Men, Logan came up the most beaten and bleeding. They hurried to wrap his limp arms around both of their shoulders and carry him back to the Blackbird, as soon as they heard the distant sirens begin to approach.   
  
Scott slipped Logan's arm carefully over his head; extremely careful to make sure Logan's arm didn't bump his visor. When Jean had successfully strapped Logan to a medical bed tucked away in the back of the jet. Scott limped up to the front of the Blackbird and began to prepare for ascent.  
  
"Wait!" Jean called up to him, rushing as fast as she could in her weakened form down the almost closed ramp of the jet and back out into the debris. "Jean!" Storm called out from her kept position on the floor, seeing the distant trees illuminate with the lights of approaching police cars and ambulances.   
  
Much time passed before Jean returned, almost too much time. She returned with her arms full of ice from Storm's recent blizzard she'd scent to help Scott when he was hanging from the pipe. She stumbled into the back of the jet and threw down the ice onto the empty medical bed opposite the one Logan was on.  
  
With the ice taken care of, she hurried to the front of the jet and helped Storm into a chair, securing her tightly with the seatbelt as she had done so many times when driving the Professor somewhere. "Everybody in?" Scott yelled back, placing his good hand readily on the controls.   
  
"Go! Go!" Jean yelled, hurrying back to Logan and begin to care for him. She braced herself against the wall as the bottom of the jet began to shake with power and they were off into the night, safe and sound.  



	4. The Price Of Survival - Chapter 4 : Fray...

Metallica: Poor Twisted Me (cont.)  
  
I don't want it  
  
So tear me open, but beware  
There's things inside without a care  
And the dirt still stains me  
So wash me, 'till I'm clean...  
  
I'll tear me open, make you gone  
No longer will you hurt anyone  
And the fear still shapes me  
So hold me, until it sleeps...  
  
Until it sleeps...  
  
~*~  
  
The Price of Survival Chapter .4 - Frayed Ends of Sanity  
  
(Sum up chapter before: After a walk in the woods, Logan is captured by the evil new Brotherhood, lead by Mystique, and is possessed and devoured from the inside by a child known as Knightmare. Storm, Jean, and Cyclops burst in and ruin Mystique's little party, and save Logan and manage to escape with their lives, and an extra one.)   
  
*finally, we're back to the real present...*   
  
"I've got it!" Jean burst in through the cafeteria doors, finding Storm seated at one of the empty tables gingerly sipping a cup of coffee, just as she had seen in her mind. "I know why he acted that way..." Storm nodded for her to continue, so she did.  
  
Almost two hours later, Storm's eyes were wide with the mix of confusion and understanding, each one battling over one another. She had been so swept up in Jean's vision that her coffee still was filled where it had been when Jean had come in to the cafeteria.  
  
"So he's possessed?" Ororo said, not being able to find the right word. She looked at Jean confusingly as she stared blankly back, neither of them completely understanding. "So, what do we do?" Ororo asked, spinning her cup on the tabletop, her fingernails clicking against the ceramic surface.  
  
"I don't know..." Jean said, her chin was supported on her hand and her elbow held everything up on the tabletop. She turned her eyes up to stare at the ceiling as if that might help her think well or give her a clue to what they should do.  
  
"Maybe we should go find Scott..." Ororo suggested, standing up and emptying her cold coffee down the sink in the back of the kitchen. She returned to find Jean slumped down on the table, her face hidden beneath her arms.  
  
"Jean?" Ororo stooped beside her and gently placed her hand reassuringly on her shoulder, feeling her shake beneath her palm. "Are you alright?" Her dark eyes looked at Jean in pity as she rose, wiping away her tears with shaky hands.  
  
"Let's go..." Jean managed, her eyeliner pulled into a long streak down her cheek, curving against the contour of her sharp cheekbones and jaw. She allowed Ororo to keep her hand on her shoulder as they walked out of the silent cafeteria.  
  
After a quick stop to her room to freshen her make-up, Jean emerged, seeing Ororo sitting quietly on her bed, and she forced a smile. Jean raised her hand to her head and closed her eyes, looking to find Scott's brainwaves and quieting everything else in her mind.  
  
*Scott, we know what happened to Logan...please come back...* She connected Ororo into the thought-link, letting her know what was going on. *I'm on my way...* Scott sent back, Jean watching him as he hopped back on his motorcycle and making his way back to the school.  
  
He didn't appear to be angry at all; maybe the little joy ride had done him good. *We'll meet you in the garage...* She sent before dropping the link and opening her eyes. With a sideways glance at Ororo, she walked out of the room and made her way to the garage with Ororo in tow.   
  
~*~  
  
"Her name is Knightmare...she can transfer into others by physical touch..." Jean explained, looking up at Scott from her seated position on the ground. Scott sat sideways on his motorcycle, with both legs hanging over one side of the bike. Ororo sat in the driver's seat of a topless jeep parked near the group.  
  
"So she's inside his body?" Scott raised an eyebrow, trying to choke down what she had just explained. She nodded, turning to Ororo to signify if she had missed anything. "And we have to get her out or after some time she'll mentally break him down and destroy Logan psychologically, but keep herself within his body physically..."   
  
Scott shook his head, not quite understanding, his specially made ruby-quartz sunglasses gleamed crimson in the garage lights. He shifted his weight on the bike, his crushed hand resting in his lap, completely bandaged up to his elbow.  
  
"How much time do we have..." Scott asked looking back to Jean for the answer. "...to get her out?"   
  
Jean thought for a minute, adding up everything she had seen and experienced. "What time is it?" She asked trying to get a basis of what everything was sitting on. "It is seven fourteen." Ororo said, looking at her wristwatch." She added up the hours since his capture and their rescue, "three hours..."   
  
"So how do we get her out?" Scott looked to Ororo, as if she knew what to do. She stared blankly at him for a minute before shaking her head glumly, folding her arms across her chest. Scott looked back to Jean, who paused then slowly nodded. "I might know..."   
  
"I will go check on him once more..." Ororo said, turning to leave the garage. "We'll catch up with you," Scott said, grabbing Jean by the wrist with his good hand as she turned to follow Ororo.  
  
"...I...I just wanted to say...that I'm sorry..." Scott said, looking her right in the face. "Me too, Scott." Jean said, the only thing she could think to say. Without a word, Scott turned and pulled something from the bag strapped to the side of the back, hiding it behind his back.  
  
"I wanted to give you this..." He pulled his hand out from behind his back and showed her the most beautiful rose she had ever seen in her entire life. Every satin petal was laced in intricate patterned lines of crimson and blue, some merging and threading into a dazzling purple.   
  
"Oh Scott..." She choked out, taking in the magnificence of the flower. "It's beautiful..." That was hardly the word to describe it, it was beyond magnificence and far greater than beautiful. "But, I know this rose..." She closed her eyes and looked back into her memory, filing through the images and emotions until coming upon it.  
  
"Oh my god..." She began, reopening her eyes with a look of happiness and wonderment at the same time. "I have a plan." She said finally, taking the rose from Scott's hand and held it close to her heart.  
  
~*~  
  
Jean slowly leaned over Logan, watching his sleeping face with pity as she shifted to look under is bandaging. His wounds had just barely begun to heal; the blood slowly beginning to re-clot and his broken flesh begin to grow together.  
  
All the medicine and such that was being pumped into him lamed his healing process dramatically, pulling it to an endless crawl. She quickly replaced the dressing, looking up to Ororo who sat on another medical table staring back.  
  
*I hope this works...* Jean thought and took a syringe from a tray beside her, uncapping a plug in Logan's IV and slowly inserting the needle. The yellow liquid left the syringe and flowed into his IV, mixing with the blood to turn a concentrated orange as it entered his body.  
  
He twitched lightly, his head flicking to the side with his eyelids fluttering. Jean immediately stepped back, making space between Logan and herself. Ororo stood and joined her at her side, waiting patiently.  
  
They stood there, watching Logan as the twitch slowly grew into a shiver and suddenly his eyes snapped open and he let out a hoarse roar. "What are you doing?" Knightmare hissed from inside of him, feeling the poison fill his veins and coarse through his heart.  
  
"Killing you..." Jean said under her breath, crossing her arms defiantly across her chest and looking Logan straight in the eye. "But you'll also kill your beloved Wolverine, so what do you get out of it?" Logan thundered, his voice deep as if he talked through a storm.  
  
"The satisfaction of your death..." Storm said, stepping slightly forward, her eyes filled with mercy for Wolverine, but showed no forgiveness for Knightmare. Logan began to sniff the air, and cast a weary eye to Jean.  
  
With fluid motion, he snapped the metal and silk bindings at his arms like nothing and his claws breaking through the thick layers of silk with little difficulty. He swept the claws downward and sliced the bindings at his legs in half, freeing himself from the IV's and hulking toward the two women with blazing brown eyes.  
  
Ororo backed off while Jean stood her ground, her eyes never leaving Logan's, even as he brought his claws up to her throat. "You are brave...I'll give you that...But also extremely insane..."  
  
"Insanity makes a man weak..." Knightmare continued, Logan's eyes blazing with rage as he grabbed Jean roughly by the arm and pulled her closer against the tips of the claws. "So does poison." Jean said, keeping her tone abrupt and direct.  
  
"The poison I put into him is slowly shutting down his organs, swallowing them up one by one. It starts at his heart, slowly making it's way to his intestines and down into the extremities of his arms and legs...until eventually, it takes over his brain." Jean said, watching as Logan's eyes flicked back and forth as he thought.  
  
Logan's other hand reached up to grip his head as he could feel the poison reach his brain, killing him slowly with as much pain as possible. "Wh-...where is...is...the rose?" Knightmare stuttered, pushing his voice through the pain, his words slurring.   
  
Jean stood there, watching him as if she didn't care. But her conscious screamed at her as loud as it possibly could to help him that it almost went to the point where it hurt. She pushed down the tears that burned and threatened to swell in her eyes.  
  
"Jean, please...please help me..." Knightmare let the real Logan talk, just as Jean had expected. But the conflict of emotions raged a bloody battle over the corpse filled plains of her heart. Before the real Logan could say anything more, Knightmare took control of him, pushing him down and re-attaining him.  
  
Jean pretended to break down, filling her eyes with compassion and worry as Logan tightened his grip on her arm until it hurt. "Where...is...the...rose..." Knightmare demanded, Logan's knees shaking and barely able to support him.  
  
"Scott has it..." Jean choked through the blade tips, swallowing hard on the jagged rock embedded in her throat. "Where...is...he?" Knightmare fumed, her patience growing weak as she needed the bit of essence that still was in the rose.  
  
"Outside...in the field..." Jean said. "But you cannot go!" Ororo suddenly said, stepping forward and blocking the doorway with her body. "Why not?" Knightmare dared, Logan's nostrils flaring and bringing a low growl to his throat.  
  
"Logan and yourself need medical attention. If you go out there, you risk death." Jean said, joining Ororo to block the door as both woman stared intensely at Logan. "Everything comes with a risk..." Knightmare laughed cruelly.  
  
With that, Logan's head turned upright and his mouth opened wide as a painful roar escaped his throat. When the two women heard the sickening rip of flesh from Logan's back, they knew why he had screamed.  
  
Huge, blood-covered wings grew out from his back, sopping and dripping with crimson that matted the otherwise beautifully snow-white feathers that gleamed in the light. It took at least a minute for the immense wings to fully outstretch, each wingtip barely able to touch both sides of the room.  
  
Without so much as a look to the startled women, Logan's hands reached up over his head and he shot up like a torpedo, spiraling through the air and bursting through the ceiling. Small pieces of plaster and dust rained down on the women who turned to each other, and smiled.  
  
Logan soared upward; racing through the blue sky and up until his immense wingspan blocked half of the sun with glittering beauty. There he stopped, his back to the sun and his head pointed down, looking back towards the school that seemed to be nothing more than a black dot.  
  
But with the help of Wolverine's enhanced vision, Knightmare could see a single stalk of grass in the field as if she were right next to it. Logan's brown eyes danced across the field, finally falling on Scott sitting peacefully on a bench, the rose in a glass orb next to him.  
  
Logan smiled; finding his mark and wrapping his wings tightly about his body, turning nose-down and falling through the air like a rock. He was so fast that he became nothing more than a blur in the great blue heavens.  
  
Scott peeked up to see a blur drop through the sky, twisting clouds and heading straight towards him. He only sat quietly, waiting patiently as the blur swooped low and passed right over his lap, snatching up the rose and disappearing just as quickly. The jet lag from Logan's speeding body almost knocked Scott from his seat, but all he did was smile.   
  
The blur finally made a large loop over the middle of the field before coming to land on the roof of the school, like a giant winged gargoyle that was made out of flesh and feathers. Logan wrapped the wings about him for protection as he clawed at the impenetrable orb with his fingernails.   
  
There were no seams to get his fingernails under, so he opted to beat the orb against the roofing, hoping to break it that way. But to his surprise, the orb only clanged against the metal gutter, refusing to crack.  
  
Logan roared, rearing back and extending his claws from one hand. With the hardest blow he could strike in his weakened strength, he hit the orb directly with his claws. He cried out as his claws almost seemed to bend backwards, stretching the skin behind his knuckles with fire.  
  
With a growl of disgust, Logan looked around the ground until his eyes fell upon a cement deck at the entrance of the school, he smiled. Slinking silently across the roof, he positioned himself above the cement slab and outstretched his arms with the orb in hand.  
  
Suddenly, he let the orb drop from his hands, allowing it to plummet downward to strike the cement with such force that a metallic sound echoed across the school grounds, but the orb did not break.  
  
Logan roared in frustration and fluttered down from the roof, landing hard on his bare feet with his legs spread over the still complete and uncracked orb. Then suddenly, Knightmare had an idea.  
  
With a scream of pain, Logan fell to his hands and knees, regurgitating an entire girl from his mouth. Knightmare came out covered with blood and bile, her wings dislodged from her back. Blood flowed from her shoulders, coating her back and dripping onto the pavement as she came out. With Knightmare fully dislodged from his body, Logan fell over unconscious onto the pavement the bloody wings still planted in his back.  
  
Knightmare crawled over to the orb, barely having enough energy to reach out with a shaky hand and come within inches of the orb. She stretched, pushing her arm with all the strength she could muster until her fingertip just barely touched the orb.  
  
Then, she was inside of it, wrapping herself about the rose and ripping it to shreds to find her essence to keep her alive. But with a scream of pain and betrayal, she found no essence. This rose was one Jean had clipped from the garden, trapping it in a transparent adamantium orb that one of the students had crafted with their special abilities.  
  
Now that Knightmare was trapped within the orb and unable to get back out unless someone touched it, Jean, Ororo, and Scott came out from around the corner. Scott bent down next to Logan and checked over him, reaching out a timid hand to run along the bone of the wings.  
  
Ororo and Jean walked toward the orb, bending down to see the girl smashed inside of it. She was bent to fill it, her face peeking out from beneath the tattered velvet of a petal. Her pallor was a deathly white, illuminating the crimson of the rose as she hid behind it, awaiting her death.  
  
"You...you...tricked me..." Knightmare coughed, her hair matted and slimy against her face. Her eyes were graying; misting over with a fog that consumed her mind and took control almost as she had done to Logan.  
  
"I'm sorry..." Jean said, compassion lightly tinting on her voice as she and Ororo watched the girl's face tense as the last beat of her heart ceased and the last exhale of her life happened. Jean closed her eyes and dropped her head, ashamed of herself for killing a little girl that could have had so much more to live for.  
  
"It is not your fault." Ororo said quietly, placing her hand on Jean's shoulder compassionately. "You had no other choice..." Jean reopened her eyes and looked up to Ororo, a stray tear slipping down her cheek as she rose to her feet. "But she did..."  
  
~*~  
  
*one week later...*  
  
The rain drizzled softly from the gray sky, pattering like footfalls on her shoulders and head and darkening her bright red hair. The quiet storm brought a cool draft into the cemetery, bringing with it almost a chill as if to soothe her nerves.   
  
She stooped near the side of a glistening headstone and brushed away a chunk of sodden grass set astray on the grave with her gloved hand. With her other hand, she lay a beautiful red rose against the foot of the plaque.  
  
Almost thoughtlessly, she removed the leather glove from her dainty hand, reaching out to feel the cold slab dripping with water beneath her hands. She traced her fingers in the blackened grooves of the tombstone, etching her fingertip along the curves of the picture and the words that read:  
  
HERE LIES  
·  
VENUS "KNIGHTMARE" CROWE  
  
Above the words was a pair of angel wings with a halo floating above them. "Are we gonna stand here all day?" A gruff voice spoke up from behind her, cutting through the tranquility like thunder.  
  
With a sigh and a smile, Jean Grey stood and turned back to see Logan standing awkwardly, staring at her with a questioning gaze. Crutches were pushed up under his arms, supporting him as he waited for Jean to finish.  
  
Jean stood silently next to him in anticipation until he began to lead the way out of the cemetery and back to the Jeep parked along the entrance. They walked in silence, only the patter of rain and the whisper of their shoes forbade the reticence.  
  
With a sideways glance to Jean's troubled face, Logan ruffled his eyebrows, trying to push it out of him. "I'm sorry..." He said, chancing another look up to Jean who turned back to him with a questioning gaze.  
  
"About what?" She asked, slowing her pace a bit so she was even with Logan. She stared at him until he brought his head up again, "For everythin' I did to ya." He said, hurrying his own pace as much as he could.   
  
"Oh Logan..." She was about to contradict but suddenly fell silent, not thinking about anything to say. She sighed quietly and shook her head at herself; she opened the Jeep door for Logan and helped him maneuver inside.  
  
There wasn't much anything to say on the way back home, so they drove in silence. Only the slap of the windshield wipers talked and only the thumps of the raindrops splattering against the window sang their lonely, sad song.  
  
The End  
  
By The By: For those of you kind and wonderful people that have read this story and been ever-so-kind to give me feedback and such, i figured i would return my gratitude with a little challenge for you if you would like,  
I'm challenging any of you to write a branch off of this story of - What was Mystique going to do with all that money????? Anyways, thanks again and i hope you keep enjoying my work,  
ANANOVA CROWE - THE ONE WHO LOVES YOU!!!! :* *smack!* I LOVE YOU ALL!!!!   



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